Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[ManishH]

Nope. The earliest attestation for Sanskrit is in 150 AD - King Rudradāman's inscriptions.

I am no expert here. But this is getting ridiculous. Does the composition of the Bhagawad Gita 3200 BC was not in Sanskrit, or do we need an attestation for that?

That is precisely what I'm saying - date of attestation is no way indicative of the age of a language.

Shiv has wrongly claimed that linguists use the date of attestation blindly. That's a false accusation.

[shiv]

Shiv has wrongly claimed that linguists use the date of attestation blindly. That's a false accusation.

You are making at least the fourth fake accusation against me on this thread sir. i am saying that linguists use attestation selectively. Not blindly. It is not "blind" which might be ignorance. It is deliberate. That is lying.

[RajeshA]

No linguist uses dates of attestation for the age of language.

Nonsense. Stop lying. The fake made up language "Proto Indo-Iranian" is attested to the Mitanni period. The presence of laryngeals in PIE is "attested" by the decipherment of the Hittite texts.

You are again wrong It's not the date of attestation that makes Hittite old. It's the phonetics of Hittite. Neither is the date of attestation of the Mitanni treaty make it older than Sanskrit, it's the phonetics of the Mitanni IA words.

And phonetics are the Lego™ set of the AIT-linguists! They can build their pyramid any which way they want!

[nakul]

I am no expert here. But this is getting ridiculous. Does the composition of the Bhagawad Gita 3200 BC was not in Sanskrit, or do we need an attestation for that?

That is precisely what I'm saying - date of attestation is no way indicative of the age of a language.

Shiv has wrongly claimed that linguists use the date of attestation blindly. That's a false accusation.

Does it matter whether Shiv claims that lingiuits use the date of attestation blindly? If you are going to use the date of attestation as a proof, it simply means that the consenus you build on it is wrong.

There is no need to act like goras who claim to know the answer to everything. It is perfectly fine to admit that you don't know something. Some things can exist before its attestation, no?

[Nilesh Oak]

ravi_g ji,

the thing is Ptolemy suggested a Geocentric Model for our Earth's movement, then Copernicus suggested the Heliocentric Model, and then there were others in between having their own fantasies!

So what does that tell me about the "science" used by the Western "scientists"? It's all so pfanni!

Let's throw off spin/leg spin/medium pacer/googlee on these greats of Science in a random sequence - our goal - get them out- take away their respectability - discredit their research. Here it goes

Ptolemy - He stole from Hipparchaus

Hipparchus - Anil Narayanan paper shows existance of epicycle (i.e. upgraded luxury model) 4000 years before Hipparchus

Copernicus - poor soul - na ghar ka na ghat ka - he proposed heliocentic over geocentric but was forced to accept existance of epicycles.

Kepler - have you heard of his most idiotic idea of geometric figures for each planet of solar system. Oh and I might as well mention that he was astrologer, that is how he made his living (could not get anywhere close to being a millionnaire)- he predicted upto two years in advance, weather for each day based on astrology.... and I better not forget that he estimated beginning of earth to be around (he was wise to stay way from 'error probability') 3992 BC.

Newton - What a ridiculous idea of two big bodies having effect on each other without a thread connecting them and when finally academia caught up with this charltan and asked him 'how does this gravitational force work', this cunning man gave a wishy washy answer .. "Hypothesis non Fingo". Oh, and he was in general agreemnt wiht Kepler on ~4000 BC for beginning of Earth. Shrewd felow - introduced the concept of error (~8 years) but also did not quite agree with Kepler.. thus established his own position for the beginning of Earth. I should also mention his conviction of turning any metal into gold.. but I will pass.. since this post is already getting longer.

Galileo - I missed him in chronological sequence. What a fellow -stubborn - would not admit that moon has anything to do with tides..a fact even a small child in INdia, studying under NCERT curriculum knows. he was also arrognat in not listening to papal authority.

Einstein-No matter what people say, the poor fellow would not accept QM results and kept on saying 'God does not play dice'. He did not know Shiva and Parvati do play dice while discussing affairs of the world.

Fantasy crowd for sure...

Atri ji may translate this for us,

समूळ ग्रंथ पाहिल्याविण
उगाच ठेवी जो दूषण
गुण सांगता पाहे अवगुण
तो येक पढतमूर्ख
- समर्थ रामदास स्वामी (17th Century AD )

[shiv]

It's not the date of attestation that makes Hittite old. It's the phonetics of Hittite. Neither is the date of attestation of the Mitanni treaty make it older than Sanskrit, it's the phonetics of the Mitanni IA words.

Stop bluffing sir.

It's not the phonetics that makes Hittite old. It is the archaeological dating of the Hittite inscriptions. And because it is old it is conveniently used for PIE fakeology.

The phonetics of Mitanni again depend on the very same fakeology that is used to construct "Proto-Indo Iranian" using "attested sister languages" The sister languages Old Persian, Avestan and Vedic sanskrit are called sister languages because they have all been dated to appproximately the same dates. That dating has not been done by phonetics. Sanksrit dating to 1200 BC is by horse grave fakeology. Avestan dating is similar. Old Persian is from Behistun. These three languages and a couple (or one) minor language are used to construct a fake PIE and that fake PIE is used to prove" that the phonology of the Mitanni texts is older. Just like that abominable "*ogthoom" or something which you claim means "aham" in PIE. Fakeology by any name is still a lie.

[Nilesh Oak]

We are all interested in the progress of true science though - in all its forms. I personally think archeo-astronomy has far more potential than either linguistics or philology for dating purposes, once it incorporates some refinements:

1. Ensure that the calendrical system used in the associated textual reference is known in its entirety (ie including typical details of intercalary month length, time of insertion, purnamanta / amanta)....Four calendrical systems were followed by the Vedics in sequence starting from the RV - need to ascertain complete details of each

2. Bring in some degree of rigor into the identification of textual references to asterisms that are judged to be true 'astronomical' references

3. Come up with a quantitative error range - which has been estimated by Hock to be a maximum of 2000 years but could be made much smaller based on system refinement

Arjun ji,

Your plea is with good intentions, however erroneous (no probability). This is partly driven by 'error of inductive logic'. Francis Beacon can be considered father of this 'inductive logic in our (modern) times. Again, he had good intentions. He suggested that to do science, we should clean our mind of all prejudices and make observations and nature will reveal itself to us. He claimed to have succeeded in purging his mind of all prejudices.. but apparently it was not enough for him to reach the conclusion that 'Earth revolved around the Sun'.

Inductive nonsense continues in our times. Absence of evidence = evidence of absence, ability to not recognize potential (not probable) existance of Black Swan, Science of Psychology, Linguistics, Society, Historicism aka progress of civilization, Economics, are some of its byproducts, to name a few.

on the subject of Inductive vs. Deductive or in general 'Method of science.. I suggest.


'The logic of scientific discovery' and also 'Conjectures and Refutations' by Karl Popper.

Both of them are heavy reading + have to read multiple times ( classics, must have on one's book shelf) but highly rewarding in the end (not unlike my book which I am sure you are reading right now )

[nakul]

If you want the right answer, ask the right question. What is the date for the composition of the ManuSmriti??

If we are lucky, somebody may enlighten us!

We are not unlucky, we are blind. From wikipedia :

The present Manu has already lived for 4,320,000 years multiplied by 28. (Srimad Bhagavatam 4.30.49).

To expect goras to believe this is equivalent to them accepting that they are more backward than the browns.

The same site also mentions that a kalp lasts 4,294,080,000 which is very much in sync with the accepted date of the universe of 4,320,000,000 years. More interestingly, the universe switches on & off alternatively with each period lasting a kalp.

If anyone asks for archaelogical records for such time scales, he is welcome to bang his head against my house wall because my chuna wall will break before he finds gora certified evidence beause these records are in Sanskrit .

If somebody still believes that such time scales are not possible for a human, the reason is because they exist in a metaphysical form. To give an analogy, the earth did not exist 4 billion years ago, yet the atoms that compose the earth did exist at that time. The minute a thing is, it is less effected by physical changes. That is why a 200 mph wind can blow you away but cannot affect the movement of photons because they are smaller than the wind particles.

[RajeshA]

nakul ji,

you may find the following post interesting!

[SaiK]

you guys are all lying.. nothing (no civilization) existed 5000 years back. ask any evangelist.

[nakul]

Thank you for the link RajeshA ji.

When we have such vast resources of knowledge that exist before archaelogical remains can indicate, why are we playing dumb and giving weightage to sources that point to Sanskrit used in 150 AD?? It is quite obvious that scriptures like the ManuSmriti that are composed entirely in Sanskrit have been composed well before the timelines given by western historians based on the story of genesis. I would BRFites to know better than play along the lies that archaeological records constitute the only proof.

The historic records were mostly composed prior to 1940s when quantum physics was known to exist. As such it totally neglects the metaphysical and is completely ignorant of the world outside the physical plane. The ancient texts and scriptures were not composed under any such constraints and any attempt to study must proceed accordingly. I find it appaling that the scriptures (written record, if you will) are totally ignored while making such claims when contrasting scientific evidence is hard to find.

When it took Darwin as late as 1800s and even longer for the rest of the world to prove that apes existed, the Ramayana already states their existence and hence is known to India since time immemorial. This ridiculous idea that we must limit ourselves to a western outlook while answering Indian questions is very unbecoming of BRF.

The answers are all available. The process of ignoring them and saying that answers don't exist and going on a politically motivated quest to formulate answers to suit certain ideologies has made BRF its prey as well. I hope we recover from this gora induced bukhaar.

[nakul]

you guys are all lying.. nothing (no civilization) existed 5000 years back. ask any evangelist.

where is my biryani?

[ramana]

nakul, Darwin's work was mid 1800s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

[nakul]

Corrected

[RajeshA]

nakul ji,

also please visit this link - Historicists & Itihaasists!

[nakul]

Another congi type ploy to create two when one exists. Accepting History & Itihaas is giving undue weightage to gora history under "History" & India under "Itihaas". You might as well rename them to "Fiction" & "Fact", respectively. There is no need to carry the white man's burdern by continuing to propogate his lies.

Your cyclic & linear reminds me of a child standing on the ground thinking that the world is flat. Now take the child a few km high up and he will understand why the earth is called a sphere. Now when he goes back to the surface, he will continue to accept that the world is round.

We are like the retarded child that believes world is flat at ground level and round at a height. This gives rise to cognitive dissonance and opinions that anything prior to civilization in my country can exist only in the form of barbarism in any other place.

Thanks to such dhimmis we have AIT apologists all over the place. Of all people, you should call a spade a spade and club the linear under cyclic and term it as a curve since neither can exist at the same time and be simultaneously correct. The Indic way has already proved itself when it proved the existence of the universe for 4.3 billion years and took the rest of the world aeons to come up with the "Big Bang" hypothesis and theorize a similar date.

The next thing in science is the string theory which claims that some things existed in the form of strings and it is a collision between them that caused the Big Bang. I would advise you to read Indian scriptures since they tell us in a lot more detail about these things and with the relevant time scales, future events are easy to predict.

The past is connected to the future and the people who study them in isolation lose the ability to influence it and lose out on its most important uses. The world will continue to correct itself and we don't need to follow it as the old saying the one who has not fallen into vice is anyday better than the one who has fallen and come out of it.

Thanks for reading.

[RajeshA]

Another congi type ploy to create two when one exists

Well first of all, there does not exist one! There are those who believe, those who don't care, those who are secular minded, those who want to see scientific proof, and those who have bought the crap dished out by others! So any other way to disregard this differentiation is going against reality!

Secondly multiple ideological camp strategy all focusing on a single strategic aim is better, than having one monolithic thinking upheld on the strength of belief only, drummed up by those who have failed miserably in this task earlier in keeping the sheep together! When the monolith fails, everything fails! Also the monolith makes a bigger target for one's detractors!

Thirdly Indian system was never about having one single religious ideology. It was always about openness to different thinking, as long as one retains one's loyalty to the civilization!

So nakul ji,

thanks for your guidance, but it doesn't shake my conviction that the strategy I suggested is the right strategy!

I am done with ignoring what the West does, having a misplaced feeling of security in the four-walls of my personal belief-system! I want to storm their ramparts of ideology and to tear them down - be it through evidence, be it through logic, be it through rhetoric or be it through domination!

If you feel uneasy with the direction and content of this thread, you may either like to reconsider your tolerance level or you may like to choose a thread which better reflects your bend of mind!

[SaiK]

I think I have heard it as (8.6-8.9b years old - big bang theory / sci channel). Which is 24 hours for Brahma, i.e., 2 x 4.3b years ~ 8.6b years. Each brahma day is 4.3b years. Now, I may be wrong in this. And the previous cycle - of brahma, [per radiation signature is >13b] - 1 1/2 days for brahma. Not sure the other half daynight he was spending? /universal procreation perhaps - met Saraswati.

[shiv]

glottochronology was a fad long discredited in 60s itself.
<snip>
In modern literature, glottochronology isn't ever used to specify an out-of-india homeland for IE languages at all.

That's a partial bluff. Judging a language older or younger by sound change is certainly still used when convenient, but to prove an into India theory. This is what you wrote

Neither is the date of attestation of the Mitanni treaty make it older than Sanskrit, it's the phonetics of the Mitanni IA words

So the sound change that is judged to have occurred between Mitanni and Sanskrit makes Mitanni older. That is glottochronology.

date of attestation is no way indicative of the age of a language

Nevertheless Mitanni texts date from 1500 BC a convenient date to fix the language as "Indo-Aryan" and fix the timeline of movement of language from West to East

A theory should stand on facts

But sir. PIE does not exist as a language. Yet you, who pompously declare that a theory should stand on facts have the gumption to write this:

In fact the three cognates illustrate one of the sound laws that govern PIE > Proto-IIr. The original PIE sound was a voiced palatal *eĝhom which became

1. dz in common iranian; turning to d in Old Persian (Behistun inscription), but z in Avestan
2. h in Sanskrit

But these same bluffs and selctively applied rules are exactly what is done by the community of linguists to try and hold up untenable theories.

The Pontic Steppe has no known language. Putting a language there has no proof whatsoever. Putting a cooked up non existent language there is an ironic joke, "Proof of language does not exist there, so we cook up proof for a non existent language"

The oldest "attested" language after that is ancient "Mycenaean" Greek. It was not the phonology of Mycenaean Greek that dated it. It was dating of the texts that have been found.

The next oldest attestation of Indo European language are the Mitanni texts. It is not the phonology that dated them to 1500 BC. It was not phonology that gave that language the name "Indo-Aryan". It was fakeology. It was fakeology because the date had to be after Pontic steppe and before Rig Vedic Sanskrit to get the direction of movement right.

The next bluff was to say that Rig Veda describes horse burials and must therefore date after 2000 BC but before 1000 BC to fit in with a migration theory. But there is no proof of the existence of Sanskrit before 300 BC. Sanskrit must be a much younger language. Its age has been artificially moved back in time by Linguistic fakeologists to fit the Indo-European linguist's theories. If the date of attestation of Mycenaean Greek is about 1800 BC and that of Mitanni is 1500 BC, Sanskrit cannot be dated before 300 BC except by lies and faking. Avestan exists as a language. It's date is uncertain. Zoroaster was said to have been born 158 years before Alexander in Zoroastrian texts. This has been discarded by linguists who have artificially placed Avestan in 1200 BC ( a much earlier era) to conveniently fit a theory of neat migration of people on horses from Central Asia to India.

And these people are the scholars, who claim that others are cooking things up. Oh the irony.

[nakul]

Thanks for the advisor Rajesh ji.

The linear period clearly studies time scales shorter than 4.32 billion years. If you want to study cyclic history, you have to study from the beginning which is much before that. The linear can only exist in cyclic because by its nature a linear can be a subset of cyclic and not the other way round.

As for your secular crap, what does religion have to do with it? Reminds me of Rajiv Malhotra who asked Indian diplomats on why they don't showcase Indian culture and science. They said secular. Please don't use such terms to cover dhimmitude. Did I ever say that only Hindu is the true religion? We all beleive what we want to believe but that does not change the fact that the earth was not created 6000 years ago or the universe is 4.32 billion years ago. What is secular science anyway? When Pythagoras says that the sum of squares of two sides of a right angled triangle is equal to the square of the third side, it becomes secular but when an Indian scientist says so, it is communal. Or the fact that Galileo saved his life by taking back his statement that earth goes around the sun is secular but Aryabhatta is communal when he says the same thing. Perhaps he used Sanskrit which makes it communal but Galileo used a secular European language. Please spare me the secular crap.

The west is not monolithic neither are we. To tear a monolithic structure and replace it with another is not a great victory. You have just replaced the old win with a similar new one. I will only consider it a victory if you improve upon the old one. So far we have been tearing down the old one but replacing with a similar new one. Both of us and others reading this know that this thread was created to replace AIT with OIT.

But you can't put OIT without strengthening its foundation. That is Indian science. The day AIT falls it will create a vacuum and the most powerful player will occupy it. To act in ignorance of Indian science is kicking the mother that feeds you.

The idea that multiple ideas can exist is quite fair and acceptable. Are you telling me that the earth can be created 6000 years ago & yet exist for millions of years. Western scientists do not find abandoning genesis a problem why do we continue to latch on to equally old theories in the garb of secularism & openness? So you say that I continue to nourish an idea which is proven to be wrong when I know the true answer.

The whole idea that scriptures are bunkum is an idea that has taken root since science developed and compared it with their age old beliefs. I dont believe in this equal equal and refuse to believe that a book that asks to kill non believers is equal to one that explains the origin of the cosmos.

You may continue to believe that we must continue to propogate the white man's burden by ensuring we play in their field and abide by their rules but I don't see the point of doing the same. The idea that another science can exist and by a source higher than man is non existent in western thought because they still consider man to be the epitome of God's creation. We falling into the same is laughable unless we accept the same Christian beliefs. It is upto you to follow what you want but I don't believe that for a second that the soul burns in hell for eternity.

We fall and accept that accepting Islam is accepting Sharia & their medieval laws but I digress. We can keep an open mind but that does not mean we compromise on science. What if it comes from a religious source? The time at which these books were complied there was no religion. Everything was of the same mindset. This mindset is dharma. If you believe that we should leave that accept that Indian is a Christian country it is upto you but science does not have any religion. Knowledge should not be shunned for the source from which it comes. it is upto each one to continue deluding that the earth will continue to exist but scientists have already predicted that the Andromeda galaxy will tear apart and the sun's distance with us will be disturbed as will that for the other planets. The Indic term for this is pralay. Is pranay communal or secular?

[nakul]

I think I have heard it as (8.6-8.9b years old - big bang theory / sci channel). Which is 24 hours for Brahma, i.e., 2 x 4.3b years ~ 8.6b years. Each brahma day is 4.3b years. Now, I may be wrong in this. And the previous cycle - of brahma, [per radiation signature is >13b] - 1 1/2 days for brahma. Not sure the other half daynight he was spending? /universal procreation perhaps - met Saraswati.

4.3b years is Brahma's day. 4.3b yaers is Brahma's night. During night, nothing exists, At the dawn of each day, a new universe is born. This happens for all eternity.

[SaiK]

^and what instruments our "Aryas" used to detect these radiation signatures?

[nakul]

-deleted-

[ramana]

^and what instruments our "Aryas" used to detect these radiation signatures?

u ispeek ingliss. plij to speek in hindi onlee.

Lets not go down that path even in jest. This thread will get derailed with the link language farcas.
Thanks, ramana

[SaiK]

sorry, had to work, and lost the thread. apologies for my q.

[RajeshA]

nakul ji,

You may have made a nice bhashan, but the mark of wisdom is always if a preacher knows when and to whom to make it!

You are making assumptions upon assumptions without even having bothered to read the thread. It's like you have two buttons - on one is written 'secularism' and on the other 'pluralism', and as soon as you hear those words, regardless of context, out comes the bhashan!

I have nothing really against what you have said, except that it is here totally out of place!

BTW there are many cycles in Hindu cosmology, and not just the 8.64 billion year cycle.

I am fully convinced that there was a very sound mathematical and astronomical reason for these cycles and multiples like divya years being there, but I am also convinced that somewhere along the way we have lost the rationale for it, and instead we have submitted our way of thinking to dogmatic ways of Abrahamic creeds with literary meaning and blind faith!

Now I repeat that that may be my personal view, but I can understand a view like yours as well and do not wish to talk anybody out of it!

I hope we have resolved the issue! If you however wish to continue on this topic, then I suggest another thread for this, perhaps in GDF in Discussion on scriptures, etc.

[nakul]

If the aim out of this thread is to be realized, one view has to be established. That can be anyone's view, I don't want it to be mine as long as it is correct. AIT was not established by different contrasting views. The AIT people agreed in a single narrative. Pluralism & secularism does not help if you are trying to separate the truth from the chaff.

If you wish to overlook the narrative that is already established for aeons and wish to create a new narrative, its your prerogative. But it cannot stand the test since it would be based on artificial constructs like the AIT is being destroyed today. If you want to replace the AIT with OIT, it will only lend itself to criticism once another theory comes up. I am suggesting why using straws and arguments will not last long as another theory will continue to replace it and the cycle will continue.

It is surprising that we wish Sanskrit to be our link language but treat Sanskrit treatises as communal and ditch them in favor of secularism. Your structure will fall if you don't have a strong foundation. I have already shown the strongest foundation known to man and science will continue to move in that path (indeed as it is doing now) to prove it. Whether you want a narrative that will strengthen over time or will be tossed away by the wind is entirely upto you.

You may not like my bhashan but I have noticed you have not disputed. You certainly downplayed it but never pointed out logical fallacies. Whether you agree or you did not want to, I don't know. The freedom to make the decision is in your hands. I would not want another bunch of researchers coming a 100 years later and replacing an Out of India with an Out of Africa theory. I have shown you the way to avoid you. Perhaps you are still living under the white man's spell that what he utters is science and the rest is heresy. Never mind, you have a large company.

The prevailing winds will support your structure but I am seeing the same fallacies that AIT theorists made. Take a few data points and string a story around them. It does not take much to down such a theory as we are witnessing now. You are walking on the same path as the AIT proponents once walked. I won't be surprised if you succeed in your endeavor. But the success will be temporary. Might piss you off but I am not here to sugarcoat my words. Some of it is as much cooked up as the AIT itself does.

If you believe this should be in the GDF discussion on scriptures, hats off to you. You have just proved how secular you are when science is relegated to heresy because it comes in the scriptures. Please continue dating Sanskrit to 150 AD

[member_23700]

Nakul,
Pls take your stuff elsewhere. I am relatively new to BRF. I liked this forum. Your and ManishH posts are illogical, bereft of commonsense and irrelevant. Few forum members find ManishH posts as good net practice, as some forum member alluded to, so may be there is some raw value there. Your stuff is getting irritating in a hurry.

I hope you hear from moderators soon.

[abhishek_sharma]

Family Tree of Languages Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists Say

[ramana]

Nakul, Please take it easy. This thread has ~100 pages and for you to say to RajeshA

Please continue dating Sanskrit to 150 AD

shows you havent followed even a part of the thread.

[ramana]

Family Tree of Languages Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists Say

It has all the buzz words of this thread: PIE, Tocharian, Avestan and whatnot.
Now the Turks are the Aryans.

Family Tree of Languages Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists SayBy NICHOLAS WADE
Published: August 23, 2012 Biologists using tools developed for drawing evolutionary family trees say that they have solved a long-standing problem in archaeology: the origin of the Indo-European family of languages.

The family includes English and most other European languages, as well as Persian, Hindi and many others. Despite the importance of the languages, specialists have long disagreed about their origin.

Linguists believe that the first speakers of the mother tongue, known as proto-Indo-European, were chariot-driving pastoralists who burst out of their homeland on the steppes above the Black Sea some 4,000 years ago and conquered Europe and Asia. A rival theory holds that, to the contrary, the first Indo-European speakers were peaceable farmers in Anatolia, now Turkey, some 9,000 years ago, who disseminated their language by the hoe, not the sword.

The new entrant to the debate is an evolutionary biologist, Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He and colleagues have taken the existing vocabulary and geographical range of 103 Indo-European languages and computationally walked them back in time and place to their statistically most likely origin.

The result, they announced in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science, is that “we found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin.” Both the timing and the root of the tree of Indo-European languages “fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8,000 to 9,500 years ago,” they report.

But despite its advanced statistical methods, their study may not convince everyone.

The researchers started with a menu of vocabulary items that are known to be resistant to linguistic change, like pronouns, parts of the body and family relations, and compared them with the inferred ancestral word in proto-Indo-European. Words that have a clear line of descent from the same ancestral word are known as cognates. Thus “mother,” “mutter” (German), “mat’ ” (Russian), “madar” (Persian), “matka” (Polish) and “mater” (Latin) are all cognates derived from the proto-Indo-European word “*mehter.”

Dr. Atkinson and his colleagues then scored each set of words on the vocabulary menu for the 103 languages. In languages where the word was a cognate, the researchers assigned it a score of 1; in those where the cognate had been replaced with an unrelated word, it was scored 0. Each language could thus be represented by a string of 1’s and 0’s, and the researchers could compute the most likely family tree showing the relationships among the 103 languages.

A computer was then supplied with known dates of language splits. Romanian and other Romance languages, for instance, started to diverge from Latin after A.D. 270, when Roman troops pulled back from Dacia. Applying those dates to a few branches in its tree, the computer was able to estimate dates for all the rest.

The computer was also given geographical information about the present range of each language and told to work out the likeliest pathways of distribution from an origin, given the probable family tree of descent. The calculation pointed to Anatolia, particularly a lozenge-shaped area in what is now southern Turkey, as the most plausible origin — a region that had also been proposed as the origin of Indo-European by the archaeologist Colin Renfrew, in 1987, because it was the source from which agriculture spread to Europe.

Dr. Atkinson’s work has integrated a large amount of information with a computational method that has proved successful in evolutionary studies. But his results may not sway supporters of the rival theory, who believethe Indo-European languages were spread some 5,000 years later by warlike pastoralists who conquered Europe and India from the Black Sea steppe.

A key piece of their evidence is that proto-Indo-European had a vocabulary for chariots and wagons that included words for “wheel,” “axle,” “harness-pole” and “to go or convey in a vehicle.” These words have numerous descendants in the Indo-European daughter languages. So Indo-European itself cannot have fragmented into those daughter languages, historical linguists argue, before the invention of chariots and wagons, the earliest known examples of which date to 3500 B.C. This would rule out any connection between Indo-European and the spread of agriculture from Anatolia, which occurred much earlier.

“I see the wheeled-vehicle evidence as a trump card over any evolutionary tree,” said David Anthony, an archaeologist at Hartwick College who studies Indo-European origins.

Historical linguists see other evidence in that the first Indo-European speakers had words for “horse” and “bee,” and lent many basic words to proto-Uralic, the mother tongue of Finnish and Hungarian. The best place to have found wild horses and bees and be close to speakers of proto-Uralic is the steppe region above the Black Sea and the Caspian. The Kurgan people who occupied this area from around 5000 to 3000 B.C. have long been candidates for the first Indo-European speakers.

In a recent book, “The Horse, the Wheel and Language,” Dr. Anthony describes how the steppe people developed a mobile society and social system that enabled them to push out of their homeland in several directions and spread their language east, west and south.

Dr. Anthony said he found Dr. Atkinson’s language tree of Indo-European implausible in several details. Tocharian, for instance, is a group of Indo-European languages spoken in northwest China. It is hard to see how Tocharians could have migrated there from southern Turkey, he said, whereas there is a well-known migration from the Kurgan region to the Altai Mountains of eastern Central Asia, which could be the precursor of the Tocharian-speakers who lived along the Silk Road.

Dr. Atkinson said that this was a “hand-wavy argument” and that such conjectures should be judged in a quantitative way.

Dr. Anthony, noting that neither he nor Dr. Atkinson is a linguist, said that cognates were only one ingredient for reconstructing language trees, and that grammar and sound changes should also be used. Dr. Atkinson’s reconstruction is “a one-legged stool, so it’s not surprising that the tree it produces contains language groupings that would not survive if you included morphology and sound changes,” Dr. Anthony said.

Dr. Atkinson responded that he did indeed run his computer simulation on a grammar-based tree constructed by Don Ringe, an expert on Indo-European at the University of Pennsylvania, but that the resulting origin was, again, Anatolia, not the Pontic steppe.

[member_22872]

Variation of Gluttochronology. I find the fascination for i. Steppe ii.linguistics, iii. Idiocy and iv. Horses interesting. He should also run computatinal simulation taking the above 4 into consideration, I sure that too will converge to Steppe.

As one of my beloved Witmer gurus once famously said: Garbage in garbage out.

[shiv]

In the article quoted below I find the cogent arguments, the point by point scientific rebuttals and polite consensus educative.

Family Tree of Languages Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists Say

Dr. Atkinson said that this was a “hand-wavy argument” and that such conjectures should be judged in a quantitative way.

Dr. Anthony, noting that neither he nor Dr. Atkinson is a linguist, said that cognates were only one ingredient for reconstructing language trees, and that grammar and sound changes should also be used. Dr. Atkinson’s reconstruction is “a one-legged stool, so it’s not surprising that the tree it produces contains language groupings that would not survive if you included morphology and sound changes,” Dr. Anthony said.

[Arjun]

Garbage in, garbage out - as has been noted earlier.

Change a few parameters regarding cognates and the like - and this can be made to produce India as the likely source of the Indo-Europeans. Precisely why we need more folks getting into linguistics in India.

But what kind of folks need to be entering this field? Those smart enough to understand that linguistics is a tool like any other social science. As an example - the 'best' economists are not the ones who wade in mounds of data but who typically enter the field with pre-defined 'right wing' or 'left wing' outlook and know that economic methods are tools for achieving their purpose.

Unfortunately - even the few linguists we have in India are among the duds who are deluded into believing that the data will reveal its own patterns. Having probably spent several years or decades in the trenches 'learning' the field from their White masters - they have lost the ability to see the big picture, or even understand the key assumptions on which the entire edifice is based. The best in India have always turned to the natural sciences - and the less endowed towards the social sciences. I suspect some of this dynamic may be having its reflection on this board.

[SaiK]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics_a ... South_Asia
I think the wiki need corrections.

[shiv]

Family Tree of Languages Has Roots in Anatolia, Biologists Say

The researchers started with a menu of vocabulary items that are known to be resistant to linguistic change, like pronouns, parts of the body and family relations, and compared them with the inferred ancestral word in proto-Indo-European. Words that have a clear line of descent from the same ancestral word are known as cognates. Thus “mother,” “mutter” (German), “mat’ ” (Russian), “madar” (Persian), “matka” (Polish) and “mater” (Latin) are all cognates derived from the proto-Indo-European word “*mehter.”

What has Sanskrit got to do with all these languages?

Sanskrit has a reputation for being old, but that is likely to be a result of Hindu beliefs that calculate ages in billions of years. In religion it is common to do that. A Christian hymn from my school had the following words referring to God

A thousand ages in thy sight
are like an evening gone

One cannot date languages exactly, but with written proof one can say that the language existed at that date.

How old can Sanskrit be proven to be, beyond any doubt. Well here is a clue

The earliest attestation for Sanskrit is in 150 AD - King Rudradāman's inscriptions.

So now we know that Sanskrit has existed from at least 150 AD. But did it exist before that. For example could Sanskrit have existed in 3102 BC? Or 1200 BC?

What does science tell us?

Science tells us that how much earlier than its earliest attested a language existed would be difficult to judge because all languages change. Here is a relevant quote

Regularity of sound change (neogrammarian hypothesis) is a general guideline. In the words of Hock in 'Principles of Historical Linguistics',

Sound change is overwhelmingly regular, if not always regular.

But the rate of change of language cannot be judged easily. Here is a relevant quote:

..glottochronology was a fad long discredited in 60s itself. They were trying to guess rates of change of sounds - but it got discredited due to:

1. empirical data that showed humans are capable of very wide rates of language change.
2. the specification of what is "core vocabulary" for a language is highly subjective.

One could judge that Sanskrit has not changed at all in 4000 years or even 40,000 years. But the chances that is has not changed in even 1500 years is small. There is nothing sacred or special about Sanskrit as a language that makes it resistant to change despite claims to the contrary. So was Sanskrit a different language 1000 years before 150 AD? Was Sanskrit a different language in 1500 BC? Yes. If you look at attested languages known from 1500 BC you know that phonetic changes have occurred when you compare the Indo-Aryan langauge of 1500 BC of the Mitanni texts and Sanskrit of 150 AD. Here is a relevant quote:

It's not the date of attestation that makes Hittite old. It's the phonetics of Hittite. Neither is the date of attestation of the Mitanni treaty make it older than Sanskrit, it's the phonetics of the Mitanni IA words.

So what is the history of Indo European languages? We know that he spread of horses from Europe was impostant. Here is a relevant quote:

No purely linguistic technique can be used to derive the homeland. One needs archaeological proof of linguistic markers. In the case of the AIT debate, the horse and chariot language terminology is one such marker.

Horse riding pastoralists spread from Central Asia to Iran and Afghanistan by 1500 AD as attested by the Indo Ayran Mitanni texts. The Indo Aryan languages split up into Avestan (Zoroastrian) and Old Persian. Zoroaster was said to have been born around 300 BC by Zoroastrian texts. Old Persian is dated to about 300 BC, and finally by 150 AD Sanskrit was found. Sanskrit is so similar to Avestan and Old Persian that it may have split off as a sister language around 300 BC. Written texts were found only in 150 AD (see quote above)

This is a plausible, scientific explanation of how language came to India

QED

[Arjun]

on the subject of Inductive vs. Deductive or in general 'Method of science.. I suggest.


'The logic of scientific discovery' and also 'Conjectures and Refutations' by Karl Popper.

Nilesh ji, you may have misunderstood my earlier post. As a matter of fact all I have done is to enumerate the tools that archeo-astronomers may want to use to further make their case. I don't disagree with the starting hypothesis or what archeoastronomers set out to prove - I am suggesting that the usage of some of tools towards the known goal, be refined further.

I have used the 'falsifiability' thesis quite often in my arguments - so am familiar with Karl Popper.

Coming to my first and third points - one has to play with whatever data one is dealt with. All I am suggesting is the data needs to be positioned as a case of 'known knowns and known unknowns' as is done by the linguists. But where you have a legup on either linguistics or philology is that the net effect of the known unknowns can be quantified into some kind of error range - which can also be minimized to say 500 - 1000 years or less. Lastly (my second point) - building up some scientific-sounding 'laws of astronomic references' would help to address those who question on what basis some textual reference is taken to be an astronomical one...similar to the laws of sound change. 'The three laws of Nilesh Oak' has a nice ring to it....We are all clear on the end-result, I am saying it needs to be presented appropriately and 'scientifically'.

Again, let me reiterate - all of this not relevant if the audience is the lay public. Making books interesting and readable is a totally separate art - and you are doing a terrific job of that. What these books will do is to arouse the curiosity of the general public and inculcate interest in finding out more about the timing of their own epics and past.

[Gus]

Ramana, 8000 yrs ago, it was not turks living in modern turkey. They moved there in medieval age, IIRC. Nevertheless, i am amazed at the credibility attached to that study built on circular assumptions.

[Nilesh Oak]

The seeds for 8000 years ago, IMHO, might have come from suggestion of Renfrew and then all this simulation 'stuff' might have been thrown there to generate 'scientific' blurb for the uninitiated.

I assure you that with my dating of Ramayana, Renfrew thesis will collapse by itself, without anyone doing anything to it. As usual, those who are blind to scientific logic would remain unaffected.

Even Kuhn, who I am not a fan of (but for some reason many seem to love him in academia as soon as subject of scientific progress is being discussed), admitted, that new theories are accepted by scientific community, not because many of them change their mind in the light of new evidence, but rather they die. And new generation grows up with awareness of these new theories.

[Nilesh Oak]

Arjun ji,

My comments were meant for forum members in general. I was simply using the pretext of your comments (3 Pts) to make my point.